Donald Trump v the media – who farted?

“Trump dominates the news cycle like a fart dominates the interior of a Volkswagen Beetle,” quipped John Oliver, host of HBO show Last Week Tonight, as reported in The Guardian (February 20, 2017). The story went on to lampoon Trump for his remarks about a terrorist attack in Sweden – misled by Trump’s clumsy reference to a report on Fox News about migrant issues in Sweden.

It’s true – Trump dominates the news cycle. Unfortunately, The Guardian – like the Sydney Morning Herald, the ABC here, and the New York Times & Washington Post in the US – have abandoned objective journalism for left wing anti Trump activism. Worse, instead of identifying his real weaknesses like narcissism and incurable immaturity, lack of discipline and foot in mouth disease, they try to discredit him with lazy smears like ‘racist’ and ‘misogynist’ which are not observable truths about him. EG: his election campaign manager is an articulate and smart woman; he appointed a black man to the housing post in his cabinet, etc. His immigration policy is not racially driven, as some mistakenly think; illegal migrants from Mexico or the Muslim world are not members of ‘races’. Legal Mexican migrants have not been critically targeted by him… And so on.

I watched the whole press conference to which The Guardian article refers, played in full on CNN and followed by their discussion of it. I was appalled at how badly they misrepresented it. It was as if they didn’t watch all of it, just the sections in which he was critical of the media, CNN included. They didn’t like it. They completely ignored his action list and labeled the event as crazy, wild, etc.

Like The Guardian, his media enemies belittle him and while that is perfectly acceptable as opinion, they extend their anti Trump agenda to filtering the news (like he does) or misrepresenting it (like he often does) – they have lost their authority and credibility, which is so precious to their future and valuable to democracy. Now the only news outlets I (mostly) trust are Fox News & Sky News Australia on TV and The Australian, and The Wall Street Journal. They provide a balanced range of opinions and report the news straight.

The left wing mass media’s gleeful support of anti Trump demonstrations and protests seem to provide some sort of fuel for a violent tendency that is deplorable; it is from these protesters that we hear hate speech and threats. And the biased media has itself let off a collective fart we can smell all over the world.

Meantime, journalists who liken his presence to a fart in a car are missing the news they should be reporting and analysing. EG the Russians gave WikiLeaks secret Democrat party emails that made Hillary Clinton and her campaign look bad – because they behaved dishonestly (eg Hillary being given televised debate questions in advance so she can be better prepared than Trump). The media has been fixated on the Russians – not the content of the 30,000 emails.

Trump is often his own worst enemy, de-legitimising what he says by adding stupid comments to sensible ones – like prefacing his response to Meryl Streep’s Golden Globe delivered (veiled) criticism of him by calling her an overrated actress. How stupid, how observably false. That’s what I mean about narcissistic and immature: he hates criticism and hits back. Like a child, out of proportion to the criticism. That’s a serious weakness. On the other hand, he has identified the big issues that must be urgently addressed: domestically it’s the US economy and industry, safe borders. Globally it’s terrorism and international relations.

Trump is shaking things up: sometimes he breaks things like the clumsy, immature self centred man he is. But they elected him and for everyone’s sake, they better try and make it work – for the US and the rest of the world.